NIH Issues Guidance on Salary Cap

On January 20th, NIH issued a guidance notice related to the salary cap enacted as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012 (P.L. 112-74). Division F, Section 203, of the appropriations law reduced the salary cap on NIH, AHRQ, and SAMHSA extramural awards from Executive Level I ($199,700) to Executive Level II ($179,700). Read more…

FY13 Budget Outlook

President Obama will release his FY13 budget on February 13th this year, one week late. Under the law, the budget is to be released on the first Monday in February but yesterday the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced that they would be releasing the budget late. The Obama administration also delayed the release…

DOE Reports on Tidal & Wave Energy

The Department of Energy today released two reports assessing US ocean wave and tidal energy resources along the US Coasts. DOE reports that the two assessments, combined with ongoing analyses of technologies and other resource assessments, show that water power, including conventional hydropower, and wave, tidal, and other water power resources, can potentially provide 15…

FINAL FY12 Appropriations

Avoiding yet another threat of government shutdown, the Senate on Saturday approved the FY12 conference report after the House adopting it Friday. The final package completes the work on the FY12 appropriations bills. It includes the text of the underlying Military Construction-VA bill and eight other spending measures: Defense, Energy-Water, Financial Services, Homeland Security, Interior-Environment,…

FY12 Spending Package Conference Report Released

After negotiations late into the night and leaders finally reaching an agreement, the House today released the conference report containing details for the remaining nine spending bills. The House is expected to vote on the package this afternoon and then send it to the Senate for quick passage. It looks like Congress will remain through…

FY12 “Megabus” Bill

House and Senate appropriations members are close to an agreement on their $900 billion-or-so “megabus” appropriations deal on the remaining nine FY12 bills. Agreement has been reached on all but two of the remaining nine bills: Labor-HHS-ED and Interior-Environment. There’s still a chance that the conferees will reach enough of an impasse on those two…

Congress this Week

The Week Ahead The House is in at noon today, though no votes are expected. Eight bills will be considered under suspension of the rules. House Republicans will try to move forward on a deal to extend the expiring payroll tax cut and could hold a vote this week. The Senate’s in at 2 pm…

Future of SBE Sciences at NSF

NSF released a new report this morning that outlines their research priorities in the coming decade in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. The report, titled “Rebuilding the Mosaic, Fostering Research in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation in the Next Decade,” can be downloaded here. Read more about the…

Deficit Committee Failure Likely

After a long weekend of negotiations and finger pointing, members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction are all but ready to admit failure. They will continue to work through the day Monday, but it appears unlikely that the eleventh-hour negotiations will yield a budget agreement before the deadline later tonight. The barriers to…

Today in Congress

The House begins work at 10:00 am. They plan to debate and hold votes in the afternoon on a constitutional balanced budget amendment, and the first minibus appropriations bill for the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce- Justice-Science, and Transportation-HUD. This measure also contains a new continuing resolution (CR) to extend through December 16th. The Senate will…